KUALA LUMPUR, June 16 — Commuters in Malaysia may be used to seeing roadrunners on the expressway, but when an ostrich hit the Federal Highway this afternoon, you can bet more than a handful rubbed their eyes before whipping out their smartphones to snap a shot.
Among those who caught sight of the giant bird making its bid for freedom was local radio station BFM producer Jeff Sandhu, who saw the giant bird sprinting from Jalan Universiti and onto the highway at about 3.30pm.
“From the UM bus top, it was running on that road then it merged onto the Federal Highway and it was on the fast lane, passing Bangsar South, RTM, it just kept running.
“It started out on the slow lane then it went to the emergency lane. Then on the emergency lane it overtook a car and ran across to the fast lane. It was just switching lanes here and there,” he told the Malay Mail Online after his video of the running ostrich went viral on social media.
The video uploaded on Sandhu’s Instagram account has since been viewed 1,291 times since it was uploaded an hour ago.
The ostrich was running at approximately 35km/h for about 2km, Jeff said.
“I was driving at 35km/h and matching its speed. But still within speed limit, so no saman for him,” he said in jest, adding that the ostrich was last seen passing the Radio Television Malaysia (RTM) Angkasapuri office, headed towards Kuala Lumpur.
He added that while cars merely slowed down to make way for the ostrich, motorcyclists were caught off guard by the flightless bird.
“The motorcyclists were honking because they couldn’t see why the cars had slowed down. In front you could see it was clear so the motorcyclists were probably honking because they didn’t know what was going on.
“But you could see they realised it was an ostrich when they came closer and had to swerve to avoid it,” he recounted.
Pedestrians too were unfazed, he said, and simply took the opportunity to capture the unusual event on camera.
“At the bus stop, they were laughing and taking videos and the whole time, the ostrich just kept running.
“I don’t think it registered that there were people around. Even one biker was quite close it and it just overtook the biker and kept running. The ostrich didn’t react,” he said.
